


Bellower's Dream

by spaceliquid



Category: The Banner Saga (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dead baby, F/M, Gen, Possession, Spoilers for TBS1 and TBS2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 11:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17000838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceliquid/pseuds/spaceliquid
Summary: As the immortal Sundr slumbers, his dreams affect others around him.(A trilogy of drabbles)





	1. Bolverk

Bolverk dreams.

Not all of his dreams are of the white tower and a breaking world. But sometimes the more peaceful ones are even more disturbing.

He sees a dredge woman in his dreams. The dredge are hideous in human or varl eyes, yet in the dream Bolverk finds the woman fairer than any other creation of the gods. She smiles at him, putting down her sling, and Bolverk wraps his big, red-clad arms around her, pulling her close.

“I have news for you, love,” the woman hums in the strange tongue of the dredge, yet Bolverk understands every word. “I am with child.”

New, unfamiliar feelings overwhelm Bolverk – surprise, joy, pride, fierce protectiveness – and he lifts the woman in the air and lets out a triumphant bellow. The woman laughs – a melodious chirping sound – and in his dream Bolverk loves her, loves her and their future child, and promises to carve a house for them when the war is over.

He sees the woman in other dreams, too. These dreams leave him reeling when he wakes up, roused with the echoes of desires he physically cannot have. And for those fleeting minutes on the border between sleep and reality he thinks he understands why humans act so foolish around their mates.

He doesn't remember what he says when Folka wakes him up, if anything at all – but she looks at him in a weird way, and this brings him back to his senses. The arm he almost put on her waist drops.

And some hidden part of Bolverk is glad, because if he _cannot have_ , he cannot lose.

 


	2. Rook

Rook dreams.

In his dream he sees his wife, Aldis, on her deathbed. Only this time it's not just her. Alette – the way she was back then, a baby with a whorl of ginger hair – lies in Aldis's arms, and she is cold and still too. Rook's hands shake as he touches his daughter's cheek, begging her to wake up, begging _them_ to wake up, but all that meets him is deafening silence.

He wakes up, and his first emotion is relief: he knows Alette didn't die as a baby, she grew up into a beautiful, brave young woman, she is alive – and then it hits him. Alette in Bellower's hand, Alette on her funeral pyre, _Alette is dead_. Rook curls up on the hard ground in his tent and shakes in dry, tearless sobs.

He starts dreading the night, seeing it not as blissful oblivion but a nightmare-festered torture. And his next dream is exactly like that.

He walks through the snow, carrying his wife's headless body in his arms. It's wrapped in his red cloak, and on top of it lies a small bundle – his child, his dear little baby, its skull cracked and swaddling stained with dark blood. His arms are red, like they are covered in blood too.

Everyone makes way for him as he enters their camp, gasps and mournful cries filling the air. Rook doesn't really notice them. He places his burden on a boulder at the edge of the camp and drops to his knees next to it.

He doesn't know how long he sits there; time seems to be flowing around him as he stares at the shattered remains of his family. Then someone approaches him – a scout.

“The varl are celebrating a hero,” the scout says, his yellow eyes glowing bright with anger. “They are haling him Sundr-Slayer.”

Something starts seething in Rook's chest, a hot, all-consuming tide.

“Who?” he manages to growl, coherent words melting in that crucible of his rage.

“They call him this,” the scout says, and writes the varl's unpronounceable name on the ground.

“YNGVAR!” Rook howls as he wakes up, and for a moment he's ready to kill his old friend, the monster who murdered Alette.

When Iver rushes into his tent, Rook's rage is gone. He covers his face as Iver pats his back, unsure what caused that angry yell but always ready to help.

Rook's chest hurts, like pierced by an arrow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rook was influenced by Bellower's dream once, so my friend and I wondered what would have happened if Juno didn't send Bellower's cart away with the Ravens. I think that Rook, with his pain of losing his child, might've been a candidate for possession as well.


	3. Bellower

Bellower dreams.

Or maybe it's not a dream at all. He heard priests speak of this place, a vast grey sea at the edge of the world. He stands on the shore, watching little lights float away from him. Shadows pass him by, sculptor, human, varl, strange four-legged ones he doesn't know. They are all accepted by the waves, yet he is not.

He sits down on the rocky beach, eyes following the swirls of the mist over the sea. The silver arrow in his chest glimmers softly, but for now it doesn't bother him. Rage, sorrow, revenge – all of this is left in the waking world. For now all he feels is longing, and he squints his eyes, trying to pierce the fog and see the land beyond.

Just a glimpse. Just a glimpse would be enough. One moment of clarity, to see beyond the mist. Bellower doesn't know what is out there, but he _hopes_ , and sometimes he can even convince himself he sees it – a tiny female figure on a distant shore, reaching out for him from across the sea.

He knows his Raze; she would wait for him... right? She, who brought down impregnable fortresses, she refused to call anything impossible. She would never give up –

And yet she's dead.

Immortality was supposed to be a gift to help Bellower protect all he held dear – but instead it became his punishment for failing.

His visions are a lie. No matter how long he waits, the mists never disperse for him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used the human/varl names for Bellower and Raze for the sake of simplicity; obviously they had their own dredge names that we never learned (and probably couldn't pronounce).


End file.
